Top 5 Games I Was Totally Sorta Ambivalent About In 2012, But Not Quite Really...

Ambivalence. I could take it or leave it. Zero need to vomit hyperbole. Zilcho need to get wound up and headbutt a few thousand rage words either. All I know is my gut said maybe. These are the games I played, engaged with and had no feelings either way about. This is a list you can safely ignore. Come back when you’ve finished reading all the BEST GAMES OF 2012 lists or the BEST MOMENTS OF 2012 lists. Or don’t come back, it’s totally your call. Whatever.

[Shrug]

Max Payne 3

If I had to commit I would say that Max Payne 3 was sorta alright I guess. I played it for a while and then I got a little bit bored. It’s just shooting dudes isn’t it? Slow motion is cool if you like that sort of thing. I like it, but I got a bit over it in the end. It was all just slow and shooty and stuff.

The story was alright if you like stories in games. I do like stories in games but I got a little confused sometimes, but I kept playing anyway because sure, why not? BOOM! Lots of explosions right? Killing loads of guys. It seems like this game was about killing lots of people in the same way but in lots of various mildly pleasant locales. This game would have been way cooler if it had some climbing or jumpy bits. That’s what I think anyway, but what do I know. Nothing. Not really.

This game was alright I suppose.

New Super Mario Bros. U

Jumpity jump jump jump. All that jumping in the worlds that felt a wee bit familiar. Have I played this level before? Oh, this is cool. You get to carry a baby Yoshi around and feed him. What else does he do?

Hey friends, family! Gather round. Let us play Mario together for a while before we go out for dinner or watch a movie or something. This is nice isn’t it? Everyone playing together. Gamers and non-gamers alike. We could be playing anything couldn’t we? This could be Scrabble or Monopoly and no-one would ever know the difference. That’s what Mario is now, isn’t it? It’s like Monopoly. The rules are just there and we play it for something to do. But that’s okay, I don’t mind either way.

Ah Mario. You’re alright I suppose.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss

That was a cool ten minutes we spent together wasn’t it? When we cracked open the PS Vita and I didn’t really have anything to play at the time so I thought to myself, ‘oh, you’ll do’. That was a really kinda normal everyday tutorial you ran me through. I played that thing on auto pilot and I had a right old average time doing it.

You have lots of interesting little control thingies going on with the touch screen on the front and the touch screen on the back. I’m going to go right ahead and ignore all of that and sleepwalk through the first part of this game. I am going to have a right old not bad time playing this game. Then I’ll go ahead and not mention this game to anyone I meet ever. I won’t not recommend it. But I won’t not not recommend it either.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss. You were kinda not bad. But not that great either really if I’m being totally honest.

PlayStation All-Stars

Hey, this is the PlayStation Smash Buddies game none of my friends have been talking about. Cool. This is an interesting idea I suppose but I probably won’t play it or anything or buy it or whatever. Maybe I’ll get it as a Christmas present for my friend who used to love his PlayStation but doesn’t really have time to play games anymore. Maybe we’ll blast off a couple of rounds before going out and we’ll have an alright time.

I’m feeling a bit disappointed by the playable characters in this game, but also a little bit not-altogether-unhappy to see some off-kilter characters like the Big Daddy from BioShock as well. That isn’t bad is it? I suppose I had fun with this when I got a chance to mess around with it. I mostly just mashed the buttons and got a little confused, but this is just a fun little fighting distraction for the most part and that’s just fine, but not that amazing either. I’m okay with that.

PlayStation All-Stars is okay if you like that sort of thing.

Angry Birds Space

Beautiful times spent on the train with my buttcheeks wedged between two overweight middle-ages men in itchy suits. Sweet surrender to those flying birds I launched because I ran out of music to listen to on my iPhone and nothing was happening on Facebook. Curse you 3G, curse you Tweetdeck. If either of you were working right now I wouldn’t have to be sort of enjoying but not-quite-kinda-really that utterly normal video game.

If I could say one thing about Angry Birds Space it’s that there were definitely caricatures of birds involved. The birds were in space and I definitely felt some kind of overwhelmingly ordinary pleasure from firing the birds into flimsily built structures and watching them collapse. I may have even smirked slightly. It may have been a twitch. I may have been trying to pick a stingy bit of chicken out of my incisors. I can’t really remember at this point.

Angry Birds: a game. Definitely a game of some kind and that is an achievement to be something-something about.

I was never really a massive Max Payne buff so I'm not sure if I was "getting it" but I played the entire game... and every sequence felt so identical. I mean, honestly it was just a string of story cinematics at which point one of two things happened, you were either left behind cover with guys firing at you or you ran into a room in which about 10 seconds later 5 guys would run in and begin firing at you.

It seriously felt like I was running around a police target range killing cardboard guys who popped up in windows or from behind doors but for 8 hours.

I don't remember even reading a review of AllStars.
Without a PS3 I wasn't that interested, but...
Wait, wasn't the PS3 version of Bioshock delayed by a couple of months, after it had been released on PC and 360? How can the big daddy be a Playstation AllStar?
Eh, I don't really mind. And I don't think anyone will be bothered enough to respond.